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Calf's Head Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the calf's head well and soak it in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Drain the head and place it in a saucepan with 3 quarts of cold water.

  3. Simmer gently for 3 hours.

  4. Remove the head and set it aside until needed.

Make the broth

  1. Add the leeks, carrots, turnips, onions with cloves, parsley, thyme, peppercorns, and salt to the broth.

  2. Stew gently for 1 hour, skimming regularly.

  3. Strain the soup and remove the fat.

Thicken and finish

  1. Melt the fat in a frying pan and add the sliced onions.

  2. Brown the onions.

  3. Gradually mix in the rice flour and a little of the broth until smooth.

  4. Add the remaining broth little by little.

  5. Add the calf's head cut into 1.5-inch pieces.

  6. Boil together for 5-6 minutes.

  7. Serve with toasted sippets.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the main meat and gelatinous body that gives the soup its substance.
Rice flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich soup when mixed in before adding liquid.
Onions
Browned in the rendered fat, they add sweetness and depth to the soup.
Leeks
Simmered in the broth, they add a mild, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Mix the rice flour with broth before adding the rest. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it first with a little cold or warm broth into a smooth paste lets it disperse evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley, thyme, rice):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley, thyme, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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